Monday, April 15, 2013

Question of Sports in College is a Tie

This has been an exciting week in college sports, especially
for those of us who live in Michigan. We saw one of our own universities go all
the way to the championship game in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

I can’t
deny my own excitement. I’ve been a Michigan fan since I was a kid. That was
when my dad first was watching sports on TV—it may have been football at the
time—and Michigan was a powerhouse in those days. I was hooked. I became a fan
of Michigan just because they got lots of attention when I first paid attention
to sports.

Other than
that, I have no real reason to be a Michigan fan. No one in my family ever
attended college there. As for me, I have degrees from Central Michigan,
Western Michigan, and Michigan State University. I now teach at Grand Valley
State University.

People who
know me will know that I have cheered for Michigan, especially in football,
over the years. So when they see me sporting a green and white MSU hat or
sweatshirt, they look at me funny and ask me questions. Some who don’t know me
but are partisan Michigan fans ask me why I would sport the green and white.

That’s when
I remind them that college is about education, not sports. My affinity to
Michigan State University is due to the years of hard but satisfactory work I
put in there to earn my PhD. It doesn’t hurt that they have been doing well on
the gridiron and basketball court, or that basketball coach Tom Izzo has a
summer place in the area. I saw him once at a local grocery store and was
tempted to loft a cantaloupe into my cart from three-point range to impress
him. But seriously, college is for education. Sports is called
“extra-curricular” for a reason. But our society seems to treat sports as the
main thing.

The
obsession with college sports is a phenomenon unique in the United States. When
I taught on faculty exchange at a college in France, I noticed the school had
no athletic facilities or team mascot and logo emblazoned on hats and shirts
and sweatpants. A Canadian student in my doctoral program at MSU told the story
of driving to Lansing from her home in Ontario to begin her studies. The
customs agent at the border asked her “Are you a Spartan or a Wolverine?” She
was paralyzed with fear and had no idea what he was asking. In Canada the
colleges don’t have teams and mascots either. Sports are played in community
leagues.

As a
taxpayer and a professor concerned about our state universities, I am always
pained to read about athletes for a Michigan university who leave college early
for a professional league. In some respect that’s exciting. But it seems to
violate the principle of a sports scholarship—to help a young person get a
college education. Our universities should not be treated as a minor league
sports franchise to aid the professional sports teams in identifying their next
stars.

I have been
concerned about this for years, even as far back as my undergraduate days. I
remember when a candidate running for re-election visited the campus in Mt.
Pleasant and when asked what concerned me as a student I told him to think
about legislation mandating that scholarship athletes who go pro early return
their scholarship funds to an account for non-athletes who demonstrate academic
potential. He said he would “look into it.”

We’re
already seeing that this week in the coverage of the NCAA final. There has been
discussion of the games, of course. But the backstory since the final has been
about whether this or that sophomore will go pro or stay in school. Sophomore?
I know a lot of sophomores. They haven’t learned enough yet. Yes, the money is
tempting, and the years of playing time in pro sports are short so a young
person may want to jump on an opportunity to play at the top level. But for
that same reason, they may want to think about getting a degree and setting
themself up for a life after sports.

In my dozen
years of teaching full time, I’ve had lots of athletes in class. Only one of
them ever went pro. That may be because we’re Division II, but then again you
need to re-watch Spike Lee’s “Hoop Dreams” to remember that the number of pro
athletes nationwide is significantly smaller than the number of college
athletes.

The one I
knew who went pro was actually a good student. A quiet kid who sat in the back
row, he wasn’t an A student, but nevertheless turned in good work and paid attention.
I was most impressed when, after he was drafted by an NFL team, he contacted a
colleague of mine from his new home out west and arranged to complete his final
three credits in an independent study so that he could complete his degree in
the off-season. There may me more stories like that. It’s too bad the media does
not stress the academic achievements of college athletes more, to the
satisfaction of citizens like me and as an example to younger athletes in high
school.

At the end
of the day there will always be sports in college in the U.S. I don’t mind
that, and actually do enjoy it. But I would hope our collective perspective
would change. One way to do that is to consider that if a college announced it
was cancelling all its classes, people would wonder why it still exist at all.
But if a college announced the elimination of sports, there might be
complaints, but the central mission would not be affected.